"The Fire of Creation: The Place of Fire in Nature and Human Culture"
Series episode highlighting Stephen Pyne and the Ponderosa National Forest, from the TV and webcast series Sacred Balance (CBC/October 2002):

"Fire Wars" (Fire in the American West), NOVA/PBS, 2002http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fire/
Website accompanying the NOVA documentary on U.S. wildfire policy since the late 1800s (using the 2000 wildfire season in the American West as its focus). Offers interactive teaching modules (including a three-variable Wildfire Simulator and interactive global fire maps), links, transcript, and supplementary articles including "How Plants Use Fire," by Dr. Pyne, a featured expert in the documentary.

"Green Skies of Montana" (Pyne, 2000)http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Publications/greensky.pdf (PDF file)
PDF. Article by Dr. Stephen Pyne, especially valuable for his discussion of the moral issues in firefighting, and of the troubled metaphor of firefight-as-battlefield. Adapted from his remarks at showings of the film Up in Flame (Forest History Society) and the 1952 Hollywood film Red Skies of Montana (loosely based on the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire); originally published in Forest History Today, Spring 2000.

"Attention! All Keepers of the Flame" (Pyne, 1999)http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/290.html
Brief article by Dr. Stephen Pyne challenging the media image of fire as hostile, and reminding us of mankind's responsibilities as "keepers of the planetary flame"; originally published in Whole Earth, Winter 1999.

"Smokechasing" (Pyne, 1999)http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ideasv62/pyne.htm
Essay by Dr. Stephen Pyne on the unrealized contribution of the humanities to wildfire research and conceptualization; adapted from remarks presented on the 20th anniversary of the National Humanities Center; originally published in the Center's journal Ideas.

"The Political Ecology of Fire: Thoughts Prompted by the Mexican Fires of 1998" (Pyne, 1998)http://www2.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe/iffn/iffn_19/g_edit.htm
Guest editorial by Dr. Stephen Pyne offering advice to Mexican policymakers on the political aftermath of giant fires, citing the U.S. policy of fire suppression after the 1910 Great Fires and the lack of an equivalent narrative for promoting a policy of controlled burning; originally published in International Forest Fire News, September 1998.

"Metaphoric Meltdown; or, Not Back in the Saddle Again" (Pyne, 1997)http://www.public.asu.edu/~spyne/meltdown.htm
Brief article by Dr. Stephen Pyne challenging the "firefight-as-battlefield" metaphor and its effect on national fire policy; originally published in Wildfire, November 1997.

"Flame and Fortune" (Pyne, 1994)http://www.public.asu.edu/~spyne/flame.htm
Article by Dr. Stephen Pyne reviewing U.S. firefighting policy since the late 1800s; published shortly after the South Canyon Fire (Storm King Mountain); originally published in The New Republic, August 8, 1994.

U.S. WILDFIRE HISTORY (including specific wildfires noted in this essay)

"The Big Burn of 1910"http://www.missoulian.com/specials/1910/
Six articles with photographs, first-person accounts, and a discussion of the political aftermath of the Big Burn, especially the fire suppression policy of the U.S. Forest Service; from The Missoulian, Missoula, Montana (2000).

"The 1910 Fire"http://www.idahoforests.org/fires.htm
Another set of six articles, including first-person accounts and a discussion of the fire's political aftermath; from Evergreen Magazine, Winter 1994-1995, on the website of the Idaho Forest Products Commission.

"The Source" (Pyne, 2001)http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/lecture2001.html
Presentation by Dr. Stephen Pyne on the Great Fires of 1910 and their political aftermath, delivered at a joint meeting of the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society, March/April 2001.

Mann Gulch: A Virtual Tourhttp://mgulch.freeyellow.com/
Eleven-step "field trip" through the area of the fire, with historical and current photos; by Rod Benson, Helena [Montana] High School science teacher.

The 1988 Forest Fires of Yellowstone National Parkhttp://www.x98ruhf.net/yellowstone/fire.htm
Includes a helpful intro to wildfire ecology; by Robert Ruhf, Ph.D. student in the Institute of Science Education, Western Michigan University.

Interagency Accident Investigation Team Report, 1994http://www.fs.fed.us/land/scanyon.html
Agencies involved: U.S. Bureau of Land Management; National Park Service; Office of Hazard and Fire Programs Coordination, U.S. Department of the Interior; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; U.S. Forest Service; National Interagency Fire Center; National Weather Service.

Lessons Learned from the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Firehttp://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00257t.pdf (PDF file)
PDF. Statement of Barry T. Hill of the U.S. General Accounting Office; originally prepared for a hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate, July 20, 2000.

FireCall: A Wildland Firefighter Speaks Outhttp://www.nationalgeographic.com/firecall/
Four-minute video of a 52-year-old wildland firefighter musing on the rewards and hazards of his work; from National Geographic.

Wildfire Season Summarieshttp://www.nifc.gov/stats/
For the years 1998 to the last complete wildfire season, in addition to other statistics on wildland and prescribed fire; from the National Interagency Fire Center.

Current Wildfire Season, from WildfireCentral.orghttp://www.wildfirecentral.org/
In addition to government agencies that provide current fire news (below), this site from the Wilderness Society provides daily updates as well as Wilderness Society publications, testimony, and links. The visitor may submit questions to five wildfire specialists through the link titled "The Experts."

WILDFIRE ECOLOGY

"Wildfire Ecology in the Western United States"http://www.cyberwest.com/cw17/fire1.html
Non-technical article from the U.S. Geological Survey reviewing the interrelationship of fire and western landscapes: forest, shrublands, and desert; originally published in Cyberwest Magazine, Sept. 17, 1999.

"How Plants Use Fire (and Are Used by It)" (Pyne, 2002)http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fire/plants.html
Article by Dr. Stephen Pyne on the varied modes of plant and ecosystem adaptation to fire; on the site "Fire Wars," NOVA/PBS, 2002.

Fire and the Land Use History of the Colorado Plateauhttp://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/Change/reintroduction_of_fire.htm
Fire-related sections in the vast project "Canyons, Cultures, and Environmental Change: An Introduction to Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau," from Northern Arizona University and the U.S. Geological Survey. Fire-related sections include:

"The Global Impact of Biomass Burning"http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/biomass_burn/globe_impact.html
Technical yet accessible articleto quote: "The contribution of boreal forest fires . . . to global emissions from biomass burning is not as well understood as are emissions from tropical forests"; in Environmental Science and Technology (NASA), March 1995.

FROSTFIRE: Landscape-scale Fire Experimenthttp://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/research/targeted/frostfire/index.shtml
Extensive site on the FROSTFIRE project, a prescribed research burn and global change experiment in the Alaskan forest in July 1999, designed "to build a full picture of the carbon, water, and energy pools and fluxes in the boreal forest before, during, and after the fire"; includes research reports, a photo gallery, and updated news; from the U.S. Forest Service.

National Interagency Fire Agency (NIFC)http://www.nifc.gov
First place to go for current wildfire information in the U.S. (needs a site map to reveal its hidden resources.)

National Fire Plan: Managing the Impact of Wildfires on the Communities and the Environmenthttp://www.fireplan.gov
Organized after the 2000 wildfire season to coordinate federal and state management of wildland fire and its impacts; a joint effort of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and the National Association of State Foresters.

FIREWISE: The National Wildland/Urban Interface Fire Programhttp://www.firewise.org/
Information for people who live or vacation in fire-prone areas of North America; sponsored by six government agencies and two independent organizations.

Video Clips, 2000 wildfire seasonhttp://greenforests.com/video.html
Six segments, available in large format (most of the Cerro Grande Fire), useful for illustrating basic concepts of fire behavior and human-fire interaction; from the Intermountain Forest Association.

Wildfires: Satellite Image JAVA Animations (NASA, NOAA, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison).http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/misc/
From this page, scroll to the 25+ animations of recent wildfires in the Western Hemisphere; from the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (NASA)http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/
Search page for access to all NASA images of earth from space since 1961. One can use the simple map-click method, but it is worth learning the multi-variable technical search process.